It is hard to mentally prepare to get lapped, racing for top 35 instead of top 10, getting creamed.

I watched a video interview of Mary McConneloug last night, filmed before the US MTB Championships this summer... she was calm and confident and smiling. She didn't seem a bit nervous, not a bit worried about how she would perform. She was confident that she would give all her body would allow on the given day.

She was just a regular person, sitting in a coffee shop, talking to a friend (with a video guy in the background).

Does she know that there are kids like me, plagued with the Peter-Pan Syndrome, that want to grow up to be like her?

Do Katie and Amy and Georgia know that their pictures fill the training journals and bedside-table drawers of local top-5 racers?

What would it feel like to know you had a chance at the hole shot, a possibility of standing atop the podium, that zipping into the jersey with the stars and stripes wasn’t far from reality?

What will it feel like to stand next to those women one week from today?

For me, cross is a money-sucking addiction, a hobby that fills my weekends and free-time, a passion that brings a smile to my face.

For these women, it is who they are, their passion, their livelihood.

When I contemplate the feelings that will fill my mind as I stand on the line and prepare for 45 minutes of wonderful, torturous bliss, I realize how crazy it is that I have the honor to, for just one split second, as the gun goes off, be racing with my idols.